"Texas Cow Town" Fort Worth by grandmaR

Armour-Swift Sign

In 1849 Fort Worth was a military post to protect struggling ranchers from Indian attacks. After the Army left, it became a trading post, and after the Civil War the dusty trails were filled with longhorns.

In 1873, when the first railroad stopped short of Fort Worth in Dallas, there was a panic, but Fort Worth's citizens convinced the Texas and Pacific Railroad that they could finish the last 26 miles of track before the land grant expired in 1876. Everyone who could swing a pick helped lay the rails. Once the railroad was completed, Fort Worth became the "capital" of the Southwestern cattle country. By the end of the 19th century, stockyards ringed the city and the great meatpacking houses moved in. Then with the oil boom in 1912, the population tripled in two decades.

Fort Worth combines skyscrapers and historic buildings. Shops and gaslit buildings line Exchange Street in the Stockyard District.

Crowds waiting for the cattle drive

While the west begins in Fort Worth, Dallas is where the east peters out. Fort Worth with about a half million people has also been know as Panther City (because of reports of bobcat sightings) and Cowtown.

Because the two cities share the large Dallas Fort Worth airport there has been some rivalry between the two cities. Fort Worth thinks that the citizens of Dallas are snobs, and Dallas thinks that Fort Worth is an overgrown rambunctions cowboy town.